Before we really have a chance to gawk at Carmen and her sparkly ineptitude, we're interrupted by a She Mail! "Hey Dragsters. Listen up. Can you hear that? It's herstory calling. Learn to embrace the past, make it your own. And you might just be America's next drag superstar."

In waltzes Ru with a delightful black & white polka dot shirt and sky-blue blazer to tell the girls that they’ll be playing Rusical Chairs – when the music stops, the last girl standing must finish the lyric. Get it right, boot another queen. Get it wrong, you’re out. Oh, and of course, they have to wear high heels as they play. Of course.

Here's what’s really funny about Carmen: She tries really hard to be this scheming diva but she just doesn't have the chops. As the girls all vie for the chairs, she’s clearly on the five-second delay so she can boot the "boogers." But she fucks up on the SECOND round because she doesn’t know the lyric. A real scheming diva only schemes when she knows she can win.

So in the end, Manila wins the mini challenge, and gets to choose the order for the main event, RuPaul-a-Palooza. Yes. The girls must all lip sync (for their lives?) to Ru's new single -– but they have to interpret it in different styles – pop, hip hop, reggae, punk, disco and country. Manila, herself a scheming diva, chooses to just let the girls pick their genre based on the order in which they're already standing. On the surface, this looks surprisingly fair. But with girls -– real or wannabe -– there's so much more than meets the eye.

Shangela reveals on Untucked that she knew she’d end up choosing last and she really didn’t want to get stuck with reggae, so she started whispering in Carmen’s ear that she'd really *like* reggae. Naturally, Carmen chooses reggae for herself. Which, during Drag Race, I was like, “This bitch really thinks she’s gonna pull off reggae?” It all makes sense now.

So here’s how it all goes down: Manila chooses disco, because any self-respecting queen with a choice would go right for the Donna Summer era with all its sparkles and tight polyester. Raja chooses punk. Yara (who gets to gets to go before Carmen -- SCANDAL!) chooses pop. Alexis chooses hip hop. Carmen, as I mentioned before, gets reggae. And Shangela, the self-professed country girl, gets country. Remember what I said about Carmen trying to be a scheming diva? And how it wasn’t working out for her?

So now it’s time to rehearse and put together an outfit, and Shangela and Alexis are talking with Carmen about how it was kind of shitty for Manila to give Raja a prime spot and not her. Carmen says she thinks these two are just trying to start drama, but I’m thinking that if you call yourself Heather…and that movie ended with a bomb going off and blowing someone to smithereens…THAT’S drama. It’s also another clever bit of foreshadowing. But that’s for later.

Carmen decides to ask Raja and Manila directly about the situation. Manila says there’s nothing shady going on, and that she’s not strategizing…aside from doing it for her own benefit.

"Oh, so you're being selfish," Carmen deduces. Manila throws her a side eye like, “Bitch, I’m not your husband,” and explains that this was the fairest way to handle it without the boogers saying she’s playing favorites. Ironically, now Manila thinks Carmen is stirring up drama.

Everyone's singing in the workroom. Yara is really tone deaf, but that’s kind of expected, because her voice has been sort of a deterrent in every challenge -- she needs to find a way to own it, and that will set her apart from the rest in a really unique way.
I think Carmen is going to bomb the reggae thing in a huge way. But Raja…the punk thing seems right for him because his voice is so deep. He tells Ru that he wanted to be a punk as a teenager but in his head he was just too glamorous, and couldn’t bear putting a safety pin in his nose or anything like that. I laughed, because I'm the same way about tattoos. I never did rock the lotus flower on the back of my neck because there might be a backless evening gown and dramatic hair updo in my future.

Alexis decides that she’s going for the Lil Kim look, and I’m stoked to see how she does this. I’m thinking Chippendales cuffs like her La Bella Mafia cover, and I’m not completely off. There *are* boobs.

Okay, so Ru announces that Soul Train diva Jody Watley will be judging the performances, and Shangela can’t contain her excitement: “Finally someone will judge performance over look.” And then it’s announced that Carmen Electra, with her fake hair, fake boobs and fake personality, will also be judging and I’m like, "Well, SHIT."

As the girls work on their outfits, Raja and Manila discuss Shangela’s "Carrie Underwood concert" look -– an off-the-shoulder, sparkly, drapey number that needs some hemming along the neckline. In this dress, Shangela is literally rough around the edges, and all Raja can do is pull out one of Shangela’s favorite one-liners: “Bless her heart.” On last week’s show, Shang explained that, in the South, that’s what you say when you can’t say anything else. Well played, Raja. Well played.

Studio time. Shang goes first, and she's a little too confident in her abilities. When the sound engineer tries to say, hey, maybe you're off key a little, she’s all, no, I got this. Just sayin’, Shang, maybe you don’t. Manila and Alexis struggle with high notes and nerves. Raja is super excited about her punk performance. Yara struggles with her voice and language but tries very hard, and it’s respectable.

What’s NOT respectable, however, is Carmen’s lackluster performance. She tells the engineer she wants to do a modern reggae, and then mangles the song by not concentrating at all, or putting any feeling into it, or even like, wearing the headphones all the way on her head. The engineer asks her in a very critical tone, “Do you think you’re performing right now?” And Carmen’s profound response is, “I don’t THINK, so is there a way you can throw some extra things in the beat?” The engineer rolls his eyes and tells her the track is flat, uninteresting…and what if she were performing live at a club, right now? Carmen says she’d be a mess, but even then, it doesn’t seem to sink in. I really can’t believe she’s been here, in this competition, this long.

Upon their return to the workroom, the girls receive MP3s of their new tracks, and all of them are happy with the finished product. Which totally explains Rihanna. And Britney Spears. And Lindsay Lohan. And…

Carmen is listening -- and hating -- her track. “I have to think of a plan to make it work,” she says, and I’ll bet that plan includes assless chaps and pulling some dude on stage. Same old, same old.

So the moment of truth is upon us -– the night of the performance. And in walks RuPaul, along with Jody Watley, Michelle Visage, Jeff Moran and Carmen Electra. It's like that old joke where a bunch of people walk into a bar and something weird happens that makes you laugh at the end.

Manila walks out with a giant 'fro and lots of sparkle for her disco number, and it's fabulous. Alexis rocks these latex boobs with pasties on ‘em for her hip hop song -- and Michelle hates them. "THESE are breasts!” she tells Ru and flashes her. Ru is momentarily surprised, and sometimes I really can’t help but giggle at how gay men clutch their pearls (pun intended) whenever a woman confronts them with real breasts, period talk or stretch marks. I wonder if they have to ask themselves, “Are you man enough to be a woman?”

Shangela's outfit misses the mark with her country track. I mean, it's like she said last week about Manila with the chopsticks and fans: “Yes, they expect that, it’s what you’ve been serving up since day one.” Shang, you’ve been little miss country from day one. You have to bring it.

Yara does a very Britney outfit: all skin and glitter. And Carmen…well, the less that’s said about that, the better. It’s a mess.
But Raja KILLS IT with the punk number. So much so that I’ve decided I like her again, even though she’s a snotty little Heather. I really think Raja could win it if she could quit being so serious and "over it" all the time.

Ultimately, Raja wins the RuPaul-a-Palooza challenge while Shangela and Carmen are up for elimination. And even in her final hour, with Cher’s Believe thumping in the background, Carmen can’t pull it together. She’s barely mouthing the words. Hardly giving a damn where her arms end up. And Shangela is doing the damn splits and crying/sweating. Who would you choose?

And yet. Carmen can’t figure out why she’s leaving. “I’m the most beautiful one heeeeeeeeere,” she whines at the camera. In my clique, we call our bitches pretty when they fuck something up: “You’re so pretty. The party's at 7, not 8.”

And in Carmen’s case, this week, girlfriend was right: she is very, very pretty.